Titus Turk

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Sea captain Titus Türk (1915)

Titus Carl Emmerich Türk (born May 25, 1868 in Lübeck ; † June 7, 1952 there ) was a German rear admiral .

Life

origin

Titus Türk was the son of the Lübeck physicist Carl Türk and a grandson of the legal historian of the same name Karl Türk . His mother Emmy, née Eschricht , founded the first Red Cross women's association in Lübeck in 1870 . She and Türks sister Eva , Wolf Ernst Hugo Emil von Baudissin's first wife , were also active as authors. August Godtknecht created portraits of children of him and his sister in 1873/74.

At Easter 1888 he passed his school leaving examination at the Katharineum . The ships lying in the city had already awakened the boy's desire for seafaring and he spent his free time on sailors in the East and North Seas.

Military career

Immediately after graduating from high school, Türk joined the Imperial Navy as a cadet on April 13, 1888 . After his basic training on land and on the training ship Niobe , he completed the naval school .

Hero of Venezuela
Guanta Harbor

In the following years he drove as an artillery officer on the cruiser Sperber in the South Seas , to East India , German East and South West Africa , and Cameroon . He was on board the cruiser frigate Stosch , came to the torpedo weapon and drove the torpedo boats S 62 and S 85 as commander . The latter he lost after a maneuver in a heavy westerly storm at Staberhuk on Fehmarn on August 15, 1898 in the Fehmarnbelt . With this the ship ran aground and then sank. The crew was rescued, the boat recovered and put back into service. He accompanied the imperial yacht Hohenzollern on its Nordland trips with the S 72 as a dispatch boat before he became a teacher at the torpedo school in Mürwik .

As a lieutenant captain and first officer of the small cruiser Gazelle , Türk went to the West Indies in 1902 . During the blockade of Venezuela , the Venezuelan gunboat Restaurador (ex American yacht Atalanta ) was boarded under his leadership in the port of Guanta , the commandant of which was the later general and revolutionary leader Román Delgado Chalbaud . Türk was appointed commander of the ship under the award of the Red Eagle Order IV class. The ship was thoroughly overhauled in Port of Spain , Trinidad with English help. From the beginning of January 1903 the restaurador was active in the blockade service and was returned to the Venezuelan authorities in February 1903 after the blockade was over. Although she was a gunboat by size and armament, Türk repeatedly referred to her as a cruiser.

From April 5, 1905, Türk was first officer on the armored cruiser Prinz Heinrich and joined the Roon a year later in the same function . After the commander's failure, promoted to Korvettenkapitän on February 3, 1906 , Türk became the commander of the Roon . At the time, this was a great honor for him. On June 25, 1906 he was appointed commander of the 2nd division of the 1st shipyard division.

Visit aboard SMS Pelikan on July 15, 1909.

From 1907 he was involved in the development of the "mine and lockdown system". When the German war fleet visited Lübeck for the first time after 1905 (at that time with the new SMS Lübeck ) on July 14, 1909, Türk, as President of the Mine Test Commission , received an exemption from his authority to travel up the Trave with the Pelikan mine ship , one of the vehicles under his control . On the morning of July 15, Mayor Eschenburg visited the ship and brought Turk and his officers the invitation from the Lübeck Senate to a feast that was given to them that evening in the Germanist cellar of the Ratsweinkeller . On April 7, 1911, Türk became head of department in the Reichsmarineamt . In this position he was promoted to captain at sea on October 14, 1911 .

From September 3 to November 14, 1914, Türk was the commander of the mine and blocking system in the Marine Division . In September he took part with her in the siege of Antwerp . During the battles for the Sperrforts and on the Nete , he received the Iron Cross 2nd class in October 1914 . For a few weeks he became the first German port commander of Antwerp . Then he took part in the very costly battles for Nieuwpoort , Lombardzyde and St. Georges . During these battles he received the Iron Cross 1st Class in 1915. He was then until the end of the First World War commander of the mine and blocking system in the Marine Corps Flanders . His hometown awarded him the Lübeck Hanseatic Cross on November 10, 1915 in Bruges . He was wounded in an air raid in 1918.

After the Armistice of Compiègne , from November 22, 1918, Türk was at the disposal of the chief of the North Sea naval station and at the same time at the same time for the armistice commission in Spa . He made himself available to the " Hülsen " Freikorps in Berlin .

On February 12, 1919, Türk was retired from active service. Subsequently he was given seniority from the day of his departure on August 30, 1919, the character of Rear Admiral.

Civil life

Former Gazelle building
The Marienwerkhaus, Turk's last residence

After leaving the navy, Türk settled in Lübeck in late summer 1919 and took up a position at the Flender shipyard in Herrenwyk . There he was head of the security service at Brückenbau Flender AG . He later became a representative of the Lübeck Flender works . During that time he lived in the "Gazelle" building at Travemünder Landstrasse 155 (today Kirchweg 73) in Siems .

Türk took over the chairmanship of the 1919 founded association of former active and inactive naval officers , the Skagerrak Society Lübeck ; his deputy was the rear admiral a. D. Harry ward . He was involved in the Lübeck medical column of the Red Cross . When the Kücknitzer and Schlutuper local groups of the column became independent in 1927, he was chairman in Kücknitz until they were dissolved in 1934. On December 14, 1929 he received the second class of the German Red Cross Decoration .

retirement

After retiring from working life in the mid-1930s, he moved for the last time. He moved into an apartment in the Marienwerkhaus and had u. a. Willy Glogner , the house's architect, as a neighbor. From then on, he contributed his expertise as a conservator of ship models for the Lübeck museums .

In 1951, the then 82-year-old won a landmark judgment at the Bonn district court : Since leaving the Navy until the end of the Second World War , Türk had received a state pension . These monthly payments ended with the end of the “ Third Reich ” and were not resumed by the federal government . Against this he successfully sued.

Awards and honors

Turk's admiral coat of arms in the Ratskeller in Lübeck
Grave in the Burgtorfriedhof

On April 13, 1938, Türk was honored by the Hanseatic City of Lübeck on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his entry into the service. Lord Mayor Drechsler arranged for the name and coat of arms to be affixed in the admiral's room in the Ratskeller.

estate

Türk bequeathed the family archive to the archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck . He donated a Belgian military drum, a memento of his time in Flanders, to the musical instrument collection of the Lübeck Museum.

Works

  • 75 days on board the cruiser “Restaurador”. Borchers. Lübeck 1905.
  • Corals and seaweed. Episode 1: "Ranga" u. a. Stories. (no longer published) Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1930.
  • King Mataafa . In: Werner von Langsdorff : German flag over sand and palm trees. 53 colonial warriors tell. C. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1942, p. 52ff.

literature

  • Dermot Bradley (eds.), Hans H. Hildebrand, Ernest Henriot: Germany's Admirals 1849-1945. The military careers of naval, engineering, medical, weapons and administrative officers with admiral rank. Volume 3: P-Z. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1990, ISBN 3-7648-1700-3 , pp. 471-472.
  • Helge bei der Wieden : Rear Admiral Titus Türk (1868–1952). A picture of life. In: The Northern Lights. 9th year, issue 31, June 2001, pp. 24-29

Web links

Commons : Titus Türk  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Women in Lübeck History (PDF; 45 kB) accessed on March 28, 2009
  2. ^ Walter Hagenström: 60 years of medical readiness from the Red Cross in Lübeck . In: Lübeckische Blätter 88 (1952), pp. 195–198, here p. 198.
  3. ↑ The Lübeckers in portrait 1780-1930. Lübeck: Museums for Art and Cultural History of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck 1973. S. 84f.
  4. ^ Hermann Genzken: The Abitur graduates of the Katharineum zu Lübeck (grammar school and secondary school) from Easter 1807 to 1907. Borchers, Lübeck 1907. (Supplement to the school program 1907) Digitized version , no. 915
  5. ^ According to Langsdorff (Lit.), p. 378
  6. ↑ He was u. a. Crew comrade of Duke Friedrich Wilhelm zu Mecklenburg and also not far from his ship when it sank in 1897.
  7. ↑ Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German Warships , Volume 4. 1st Edition. Herford 1982, ISBN 3-7822-0235-X , p. 61
  8. ↑ see also list of German torpedo boats (1871-1919)
  9. ^ City of the municipality "Guanta Municipality" in one of the 23 states of Venezuela
  10. ↑ Lieutenant Captain Titus Türk. In Vaterstädtische Blätter , No. 3, January 18, 1903
  11. ↑ Around 1918 the ship was renamed General Salom and was on Venezuelan ship lists until the 1940s.
  12. ↑ Father City Leaflets , No. 6, February 4, 1906
  13. ↑ Father City Leaflets , No. 27, July 1, 1906
  14. ↑ Warships in the port of Lübeck. In: Vaterstädtische Blätter , No. 29, edition of July 18, 1909.
  15. ↑ Also referred to as "Nathe" in contemporary German-language newspapers.
  16. ↑ Knight of the Iron Cross. In Father City Sheets. Born 1914/15. Issued April 10, 1915.
  17. ↑ Michael Epkenhans (ed.): The eventful life of a "Wilhelmine". Albert Hopman's diaries, letters and records 1901-1920 . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56840-X , p. 1227.
  18. ↑ Lübeck city archives in terms of Senate files: Directory of the owner of the Lübeckischen Hanseatic Cross. Signature 1093.
  19. ↑ With this addition it is recorded in the Lübeck address books.
  20. ↑ Chronicle. In: Vaterstädtische Blätter , year 1929/30, No. 6, edition of December 22, 1929, p. 24.
  21. ^ Admiral wins in Bonn. In: The time . No. 4/1951.
  22. ↑ a b c d e f g h Ranking list of the Imperial German Navy for 1918 , Ed .: Marine-Kabinett , Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1918, p. 9.
  23. ^ Antjekathrin Graßmann (Hrsg.): Inventory overview of the archive of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. (Publications on the history of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, Series B Volume 29) Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1998, ISBN 3-7950-0467-5 , p. 251.
  24. ^ Ulrich Althöfer: Von Zinken, Serpenten and Giraffe pianos: historical musical instruments from four centuries in the Museum for Art and Cultural History of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck. Catalog for the special exhibition and collection directory Behnhaus Lübeck, July 9 to October 15, 2000. Museum for Art and Cultural History of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, Lübeck 2000, p. 30
personal data
SURNAME Turk, Titus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Türk, Titus Carl Emmerich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German rear admiral
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1952
Place of death Lübeck